Familiar Eyes
by alicerosemalfoy
Summary: Spring lets many things awaken, even memories that were buried too deep to ever be revealed. The war lies many years in the past now, but when old friends meet again, the ones who were supposedly dead, come back to life.
1. Flecked Hazel Meets Starless Blue

**AN: I think you know that none of these characters and locations are mine. And that I'm not JKR. :D  
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**Chapter 1**

**Flecked Hazel Meets Starless Blue**

A crisp little breeze blew through Hogsmeade's Main Street, making the odd stray leaf flutter about. It was spring and the leaves I just mentioned were still left-overs from last autumn that had been buried by the heavy snow and had re-emerged as the days got warmer. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, it was spring. Spring had also made other things awaken, for example the little male sparrow, sitting on a twiggy branch, that was trying desperately to impress a squirrel. Poor little guy.

A young girl, no older than four, skipped down the road in yellow wellies chanting a funny little tune: "Spring, spring, spring is almost here. Spring, spring, spring is the time to cheer. Spring, spring, spring is almost here. Spring, spring, spring the sky will be so clear..."

Daphne looked up and snorted quietly. The sky was glum and grey, typical English weather for you. This thick blanket of glumness was not going anywhere any time soon.

SLAM!

Daphne dropped her multiple shopping bags into a puddle, (wasn't she a lucky one, ey?) as somebody bumped into her.

"Oi! Watch where you walk, lady!" a young lad of about sixteen sneered down at her. Daphne let a hiss escape through her teeth.

"Here," a raspy voice said next to her, "let me help you with that."

"No, no, no. I'm fine. Fine." she muttered, bending to gather her things. She groaned internally as she saw that her lovely slice of apple pie, that she was planning on having for lunch, was soggy and drenched from the dirty puddle water.

"Oh really, it's no bother at all. Here." the male voice said, handing her a box of broken eggs.

Daphne shook her head and wondered why somebody would even bother to help her on a day like this. "Really, you don't have to -" Daphne looked up, and narrowed her eyes. The man was smiling at her. He had a kind smile. No one had smiled at her like that in years. That smile twitched memories from her childhood. And school. But no, she couldn't think of that. It was too far back, and buried too deeply to be dug out now. And yet, the corners of her mouth tugged into a tentative smile in response. She straightened up and met his eyes. Hazel eyes, flecked with tiny brown spots. She'd recognise them anywhere. She would never forget them. A surge of memories burst through the dam that she had built up over the years, for her own mental well being and sanity. Hazel eyes flecked with brown spots. Her heart fluttered in her chest.

He looked back at her, politely and slightly reserved at first, before realisation dawned in those hazel eyes flecked with brown spots. Dark blue eyes, like a starless, clear night sky. He would recognise them anywhere. He would never forget them. But it couldn't be. He had to be mistaken. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of witches that passed through Hogsmeade each year, so, this couldn't be right. She shouldn't be here. It wasn't possible. She should be dead. Dead as a door mouse. This was just some weird, completely otherworldly coincidence.

"Theo...?" she whispered, no louder than the faintest spring breeze.

Dark blue eyes, like a starless, clear night sky. "Daph...?" he swallowed, barely able to keep on his legs as emotions he didn't even knew existed, and memories he had long forgotten, bombarded his conscious mind.

"Theo." she answered a bit louder, unable to believe what was standing right before her. It was him. She thought she'd been mistaken, but it was him. Without a doubt. She thought he'd died, but he hadn't. He was here. And very much alive. "Theo! Oh, Theo!" she dropped her carton of broken eggs and soggy apple pie, and buried her head in his oh-so familiar chest - breathing in his oh-so familiar smell. It had been too long.

The still, brown surface of the shallow puddle rippled like the Atlantic during a violent storm, as a single raindrop broke it like a bullet. Then another one fell from the sky. And another. And another. And before anyone could say 'Snidget on the Quidditch Pitch' it was raining sheets of exploding, wet missiles. Splat, splot, splash.

"Daph," Theodore took a small step back from her embrace, "I think it's raining."

She smiled up at him, her eyes giving birth to millions of bright stars, as if somebody had turned on a light with a flick of their wand. "You know what Theo, I think you're right. As always." She giggled like the little girl that he had become friends with back in their days at school, as a single rain drop fell on her cheek and slowly rolled down it like a crystal tear. It warmed his heart to see her giggle like that. He'd never in a million years thought that he'd be lucky enough to witness it again.

"Come on, Daph, let's go to the Three Broomsticks. Catch up. I think we've earned ourselves a good old butter beer."

"I couldn't agree with you more!" Daphne said, happily following Theodore down Main Street; that was now miserably vacant due to the horrible English weather; her puddle-wrecked groceries long forgotten.

The Three Broomsticks hadn't changed a bit since their school days; and so they found their old booth, where they had spent many a frosty winter day sipping butter beer and discussing classroom-politics with the rest of the gang; in no time at all. When they were seated and both clutching warm mugs of their favourite frothy buttery drink, Theo said, "So Daph, how long has it been?"

Daphne looked down at her hands, before meeting his gaze again. "Oh, I'd say about sixty years."

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**AN: Dun, dun, DUN!...review people of the world. I know when you are reading, I know when you don't review...I know if you've...ok I'll stop right there :)**


	2. All Is Bad In Love And War

**Chapter 2**

**All is Bad in Love and War**

Outside, dirty brown leaves were slapping against the window pane, carried by the excruciating screams of the wind. Raindrops raced each other, leaving trails of clearness on the grubby glass. The screech of a crow carried through the violent display of nature battling out the change of seasons. However, inside, a warm fire was crackling, people were laughing, and Daphne listened with rapt attention to the story of her friend's life that she had so cruelly been ripped from...

"It all started during the war, you can probably remember what it was like: Dead bodies piled up at every corner, Professors dying to protect us...light...lots and lots of light.

And blood – enough to fill the Black Lake. It stuck to our shoes and seeped through our robes, it was warm, I remember. I'll never forget the metallic smell that burned through my nose, and the stench of charred flesh that clung to us for months, like some cruel reminder of what we were trying so desperately to forget.

The pain. It was everywhere. The heart-wrenching screams of mothers as they watched their children fall like dominoes. The sight of classmates, whose names you never bothered to learn, lying still and unmoving as you tripped over them, trying to save yourself. Hogwarts, our home, being turned into a tomb, like it was some sick joke.

Tears of fear, loss and desperation. We were all so confused. I was confused; should I follow my father and fight for something I knew to be wrong, or should I, for once, show courage and defy the power that had run my life.

It was chaos."

"Yeah, I remember." Daphne nodded slowly, "I don't think any of us will ever be able to forget."

"Yes, well, in all that mess, we lost each other. Draco, Vince and Greg were the first to vanish, then we lost sight of you, Pans and Milicent were the next to go, until it was only me and Blaise stumbling around. But then Blaise and I got separated by a collapsing wall; it was only well after the fight, in the Great Hall where we were searching for each other's bodies; that we found together again. Except you. You were gone. We turned over everybody twice, but it was like you had disappeared. Days we looked, digging through the rubble of our school, hoping that we'd at least find what was left of you. But we never did. So we and everyone else, well, we just assumed..."

Daphne nodded, thinking back to that time, all those years ago, when she had thought the same.

"It was terrible. The school held a memorial service for all those who had died protecting Hogwarts and our freedom. You and your family were included in it. There's even a plaque with your name and date of death hanging somewhere on the third floor, because that's where most unidentified died, so apparently you were one of them. We spent months rebuilding that school from the ashes, it looks glorious now, I tell you. It's not the same though, of course, not to us anyway. We went back and repeated our seventh year, with McGonagall as Headmistress, cause Snape died if you didn't know yet. Well, anyway, that year was the weirdest we'd ever had. Even weirder than the whole Dementor invasion thing, or the Chamber of Secrets. Hogwarts was empty. There were only about fifty in each House that dared come back, or were alive to come back. We got our degree and graduated with a bunch of sixth years, who we were mixed with. I went to work in the Financial Regulation Department for the Ministry, though I had more to do with Gringotts than anything else." At that point Theo stopped, and looked up at the woman opposite him.

She was just as beautiful now, as she'd been sixty years ago, as a naïve seventeen year old girl whose life was just beginning. She'd been his best friend. He'd been closer to her, than any of the others in their gang. He had loved her. Daphne was...what was she? She was what made his life bearable. She made him smile. She made him think. She was the reason he hauled himself out of bed in the mornings. He'd never said anything, for fear of losing her. For fear of dejection and abandonment. But then she'd disappeared like a poof of smoke.

Dead for all he knew.

But the world kept turning and life went on, so he kept telling himself that all those years of fluttery hearts and butterfly filled stomachs had just been a silly teenage crush.

Daphne's voice snapped him back to reality, as she said grinning, "I always knew you'd get a smart-peoples job, and hey, you ended up in Gringotts."

"Yeah..." Theo smiled at her with sad eyes.

"...What happened next?"

"Nothing much in my uneventful life, really. I guess you could say that I just floated along like a twig on a river." He replied vaguely, tracing patterns on the solid wood table with his long, twiggy finger – not wanting to meet her eyes.

"You never got married, then? Had children?" she pushed on.

He sighed heavily. How was he supposed to evade a question of such directness...how could he possibly lie to her? He couldn't. Never could for that matter. "No, no. I did get married. Yes...Jenny Smith." He smiled sadly down at his hands. "..I don't suppose you remember her, do you? She was in the year above us at Hogwarts."

Daphne slowly shook her head from one side to another.

"To think," he continued, "in my seven years of Hogwarts I never exchanged a single word with her, and then out of the blue she just walked into my office one day. Just like that." There was a pause as he remembered the day she came bursting through the door to his office, before realising that she was in the completely wrong department. "We got married seven months later; I was twenty seven and Blaise was my best man."

Daphne smiled knowingly, "I bet he was the life of the party."

"You could say that..." Theodore grinned back at her.

"Tell me, Theo, how was life as a married man?"

Theodore cast is eyes downwards again. "Happy, I suppose. Utterly normal really, though we never did have kids. It was just never something that came up...And then she died five years ago. Jumped from the topmost window...she didn't even say goodbye...I think she was lonely."

There was a long silence between the two; the sounds of the Inn muffled and blurred, the shapes moving like in slow motion, and yet not quite standing still.

Daphne's quiet voice rose above the silence and drifted like a sorrowful melody into Theodore. "You loved her, didn't you?"

"Yes." He croaked, _but not as much as you. _

Because there was never another Daphne and there never would be.

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**AN: So, that's Theodore's story for you. Poor him, I felt genuinely quite bad ruining his life like that. But it's all rather romantic, don't you agree? Next chapter probably won't be up for another while, just giving you a heads up! **

**Pssst! Don't forget to Review!**


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